Letter from the Secretary of State to
the National Association for Child Support Action (NACSA)
Thank you for your letter of 11 December 2004
in which you raise concerns about the Child Support Agency and
outline NACSA's proposals for a radical change to child support.
The discussion at the Agency's stakeholder meeting
about possible policy reviews follows commitments made by both
myself—when appearing before the Work and Pensions Select
Committee—and the Prime Minister—during Prime Minister's
Questions in the House of Commons—to improve the performance
of the Agency and to fully explore all the options for ways in
which this can best be done.
The existing child support arrangements—old
scheme and new scheme—are providing support for many thousands
of children (during 2003-04 it collected a total of over £600
million from non-resident parents). Our priority must now be to
make it work well for everyone and that includes ongoing work
to further improve the stability of the IT system.
One aspect of an overall recovery plan to get
the CSA working efficiently and effectively is a robust and closely
monitored IT recovery plan. This is why we continue to work closely
with our IT suppliers and I met with EDS executives late last
year. This was a frank and constructive meeting and a formal stocktake
meeting with the Child Support Agency, EDS and the Department
will be convened shortly.
I am heartened by ongoing progress seen with
the latest software release (designed to further enhance the performance
of the IT system in line with original expectations) and look
forward to continuing progress. As I stated to the House of Commons,
we anticipate that the major software changes required to the
system will be complete by Spring 2005. Thereafter we will continue
to work with EDS to ensure that the system is robust enough to
handle the migration and conversion of old scheme cases to the
new child support scheme.
Already many clients are now receiving a better
level of service with the new scheme than seen under the old system
and the additional organisational changes required to further
enhance delivery to customers are being put in place. However,
we know that more work needs to be done and I am keen that we
should explore a whole variety of improvement solutions before
reaching any firm conclusions.
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